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4 simple tips to dominate SEO search using keywords

20 February, 2017

According to Neil Patel, over two million blogs are published per day.

“While I often spend 4-5 hours on writing my blog posts, the 10 minutes I spend optimizing each post are easily the most important,” he writes on his blog.

Most organisations know that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) should be implemented, but often they don’t know how effectively it can be used in conjunction with keywords to increase the quantity and quality of traffic to their websites through organic engine results.

Recent stats indicate that the top listing on Google receives 33% of all clicks, with the next three listings receiving 63% of clicks and anything lower left fighting for the remaining 4%.

As SEO continues to gain momentum, many of our clients are starting to ask us how to choose the right words, and how to make sure they’re getting the right searches to help them grow.

Below are the four simple tips I give them:

Maximise online keyword tools

Behaviour has changed dramatically in the age of search machines and keywords have become the summation of our thoughts into actions on the keyboard.

It’s often difficult to think of a comprehensive list of keywords on your own and there are plenty of free tools which already exist online to help you out. These are my favourite:

Keyword Discovery – provides access to the biggest keyword database derived from all search engines currently available. You can generate search phrases that people use to find products and services, as well as the search terms that drive traffic to your competitors.

Moz Keyword Explorer – provides accurate monthly search volume data, an idea of how difficult it will be to rank for your keyword, estimated click-through rate, and a score representing your potential to rank. It also suggests related keywords for you to research.

Google AdWords Keyword Planner – after entering one or more keyword phrases, Google will provide you with other related keyword phrases, average monthly searches, amount of competition and predicts the cost of running paid campaigns for these terms. You can also generate a list of keywords based on the content of a competitor’s website by typing in a URL instead of a keyword phrase.

Alternatively, if you’re time limited, the simplest way to find keywords is to start typing a term into Google’s search engine and it will automatically suggest recommendations for you based on its most popular searches.

For example, the NSW Government, through SafeWork NSW wants to be the most trusted resource for farm safety information.

I suggest compiling all keywords into a spreadsheet for easy reference, then applying to your website backend or campaign.

Use ‘long tail’ words

70% of all keyword searches lie in what’s called the ‘long tail’ of search – a keyword phrase that has three to five words. These keywords are highly specific, and draw less traffic for the website, but tend to draw more quality traffic, which leads in more conversions than normal keywords.

For example, the single-word term ‘recruitment’ would be a poor choice for optimising with 418 million results on Google. This keyword is too broad and competitive. Alternatively, ‘business analyst recruitment in Canberra’ would be perfect, returning 316,000 highly relevant results.

Brainstorm relevant keywords based on your personas

To select the perfect keywords for your target audience, you’ll need to get clear idea of what your content is trying to achieve and who it needs to reach and appeal to.

At contentgroup, we do this by consulting the ‘target personas’ that we’ve created as part of a communication strategy for our clients.

Personas are a fictional representation of our key target audience, based on real insights and research. They help us to craft our content and make decisions about the appropriate channels we need to apply in order to reach and influence them to take action.

Once you’ve chosen your desired keywords based on your personas, you’ll need to ensure they definitely match your user search intent. Do your keywords achieve your content objectives and align with your themes? Will users find what they are looking for on your website when they conduct a search?

From this you’ll get a good idea if your keyword is appropriate and you can start generating long-tail ideas.

Mention keywords in your text and URL

Ensure you mention the primary keywords or phrases in the body of the content. If possible, try including it within the first sentence or two and also towards the end of the content.

Each week a staff member puts pen to paper to write about an aspect of content communication that speaks to them, and hopefully, informs you. This is a space where our passion for writing, learning and sharing information comes to shine.